is
Microsoft 's flagship
Word Processing Software . It was first released in 1983 under the name '''Multi-Tool Word''' for
Xenix systems.
1 Versions were later written for several other platforms including
IBM PC s running
DOS (
1983 ), the
Apple Macintosh (
1984 ),
SCO UNIX ,
OS/2 and
Microsoft Windows (
1989 ). It is a component of the
Microsoft Office system; however, it is also sold as a standalone product and included in
Microsoft Works Suite . Beginning with the 2003 version, the branding was revised to emphasize Word's identity as a component within the Office suite: Microsoft began calling it '''Microsoft Office Word''' instead of merely . The latest release is Word 2007.
Many concepts and ideas of Word were brought from
Bravo , the original GUI word processor developed at
Xerox PARC . Bravo's creator
Charles Simonyi left PARC to work for Microsoft in 1981. Simonyi hired
Richard Brodie , who had worked with him on Bravo, away from PARC that summer.
23 On
February 1 ,
1983 , development on what was originally named ''Multi-Tool Word'' began.
Having renamed it ''Microsoft Word'', Microsoft released the program
October 25 ,
1983 , for the IBM PC. Free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of
PC World , making it the first program to be distributed on-disk with a
Magazine . However, it was not well received, and sales lagged behind those of rival products such as
WordPerfect .
Word featured a concept of "What You See Is What You Get", or
WYSIWYG , and was the first application with such features as the ability to display bold and italics text on an IBM PC. Word made full use of the mouse, which was so unusual at the time that Microsoft offered a bundled Word-with-Mouse package. Although MS-DOS was a character-based system, Microsoft Word was the first
Word Processor for the
IBM PC that showed actual line breaks and
Typeface markups such as bold and italics directly on the screen while editing, although this was not a true WYSIWYG system because available displays did not have the resolution to show actual typefaces. Other DOS
Word Processor s, such as
WordStar and
WordPerfect , used simple text-only display with markup codes on the screen or sometimes, at the most, alternative colors.The first WYSIWYG version of WordPerfect was 6.0, released in 1993: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/chronology.html
As with most DOS software, each program had its own, often complicated, set of commands and nomenclature for performing functions that had to be learned. For example, in Word for MS-DOS, a file would be saved with the sequence Escape-T-S: pressing Escape called up the menu box, T accessed the set of options for Transfer and S was for Save (the only similar interface belonged to Microsoft's own
Multiplan spreadsheet). As most secretaries had learned how to use WordPerfect, companies were reluctant to switch to a rival product that offered few advantages. Desired features in Word such as indentation before typing (emulating the F4 feature in WordPerfect), the ability to block text to copy it before typing, instead of picking up mouse or blocking after typing, and a reliable way to have macros and other functions always replicate the same function time after time, were just some of Word's problems for production typing.
Word for Macintosh, despite the major differences in look and feel from the DOS version, was ported by
Ken Shapiro with only minor changes from the DOS source code, which had been written with high-resolution displays and laser printers in mind although none were yet available to the general public. Following the introduction of LisaWrite and MacWrite, Word for Macintosh attempted to add closer WYSIWYG features into its package. After Word for Mac was released in 1985, it gained wide acceptance. There was no Word 2.0 for Macintosh; this was the first attempt to synchronize version numbers across platforms.
The second release of Word for Macintosh, named Word 3.0, was shipped in 1987. It included numerous internal enhancements and new features but was plagued with bugs. Within a few months Word 3.0 was superseded by Word 3.01, which was much more stable. All registered users of 3.0 were mailed free copies of 3.01, making this one of Microsoft's most expensive mistakes up to that time. Word 4.0 was released in 1989.
)]]
The first version of Word for Windows was released in 1989 at a price of 500
US Dollars . With the release of
Windows 3.0 the following year, sales began to pick up (Word for Windows 1.0 was designed for use with Windows 3.0, and its performance was poorer with the versions of Windows available when it was first released). The failure of WordPerfect to produce a Windows version proved a fatal mistake. It was version 2.0 of Word, however, that firmly established Microsoft Word as the market leader.
After
MacWrite , Word for
Macintosh never had any serious rivals, although programs such as
Nisus Writer provided features such as non-contiguous selection which were not added until Word 2002 in
Office XP . In addition, many users complained that major updates reliably came more than two years apart, too long for most business users at that time.
Word 5.1 for the Macintosh, released in 1992, was a popular
Word Processor due to its elegance, relative ease of use, and feature set. However, version 6.0 for the Macintosh, released in 1994, was widely derided, unlike the Windows version. It was the first version of Word based on a common codebase between the Windows and Mac versions; many accused it of being slow, clumsy and memory intensive. The equivalent Windows version was also numbered 6.0 to coordinate product naming across platforms, despite the fact that the previous version was Word for Windows 2.0.
When
Microsoft became aware of the
Year 2000 Problem , it released the entire version of DOS port of Microsoft Word 5.5 instead of getting people to pay for the update. As of March 2007, it is still available for download from Microsoft's web site.
4
Microsoft Word 6.0 (
Windows 98 )]]
Word 6.0 was the second attempt to develop a common codebase version of Word. The first, code-named Pyramid, had been an attempt to completely rewrite the existing Word product. It was abandoned when it was determined that it would take the development team too long to rewrite and then catch up with all the new capabilities that could have been added in the same time without a rewrite. Proponents of Pyramid claimed it would have been faster, smaller, and more stable than the product that was eventually released for Macintosh, which was compiled using a beta version of Visual C++ 2.0 that targets the Macintosh, so many optimizations have to be turned off (the version 4.2.1 of Office is compiled using the final version), and sometimes use the Windows API simulation library included.
{Link without Title} Pyramid would have been truly cross-platform, with machine-independent application code and a small mediation layer between the application and the
Operating System .
More recent versions of Word for Macintosh are no longer ported
Versions of Word for Windows although some code is often appropriated from the Windows version for the Macintosh version.
Later versions of Word have more capabilities than just word processing. The Drawing tool allows simple
Desktop Publishing operations such as adding graphics to documents.
Collaboration , document comparison,
Multilingual support,
Translation and many other capabilities have been added over the years.
Word 97 had the same general operating performance as later versions such as Word 2000. This was the first copy of Word featuring the "
Office Assistant ", which was an animated helper used in all Office programs.
See Also: Microsoft Office 2007
Word 2007 is the most recent version of Word. This release includes numerous changes, including a new XML-based file format, a redesigned interface, an integrated equation editor,
Bibliographic management, and support for structured documents. It also has contextual tabs, which are functionality specific only to the object with focus, and many other features like Live Preview (which enables you to view the document without making any permanent changes), Mini Toolbar, Super-tooltips, Quick Access toolbar, SmartArt, etc.
Although the familiar ".doc" extension has been used in many different versions of Word, it actually encompasses four distinct file formats:
#Word for DOS
#Word for Windows 1 and 2; Word 4 and 5 for Mac
#Word 6 and Word 95; Word 6 for Mac
#Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003; Word 98, 2001, and X for Mac
The newer ".docx" extension signifies
Office Open XML and is used by Word 2007.
Word document formats (
.DOC ) as of the early
2000s were a ''
De Facto '' standard of
Document File Format s due to their popularity. Though usually just referred to as "Word document format", this term refers primarily to the range of formats used by default in Word version 2–2003. In addition to the default Word binary formats, there are actually a number of optional alternate file formats that Microsoft has used over the years.
Rich Text Format (RTF) was an early effort to create a format for interchanging formatted text between applications. RTF remains an optional format for Word that retains most formatting and all content of the original document. Later, after HTML appeared, Word supported an HTML derivative as an additional full-fidelity roundtrip format similar to RTF, with the additional capability that the file could be viewed in a web browser. Word 2007 uses the new
Microsoft Office Open XML format as its default format, but retains the older Word 97–2003 format as an option. It also supports (for output only)
PDF and
XPS format.
